Rap Music Serves As Evidence In Many Trials Across UK, Study Reveals

Study found 68 cases over 3 years using rap lyrics as evidence against 252 defendants.

A new study by researchers at the University of Manchester has uncovered a surprising trend in England and Wales: rap and drill music is being used as prosecution evidence in serious criminal cases. The analysis identified 68 cases spanning three years where lyrics from these genres were presented as evidence against 252 defendants, including those facing charges of gang-related murder.

As per a release by the University of Manchester, rap lyrics and videos are regularly used as prosecution evidence in youth violence criminal cases in England and Wales. The material selected by the state typically has violent themes, often from the popular ‘drill’ rap music genre, and is composed by one or more of the defendants or by one of their friends. This use is deeply controversial because of concerns that rap is an unreliable form of evidence, and that its use is unfairly prejudicial.

Despite mounting criticism, there is very little regulation or monitoring of how rap is being used as criminal evidence, and it continues to be used to build ‘gang-related’ prosecutions under highly contentious secondary liability laws. In turn, ‘gang’ labels, which have even been discredited as imprecise and racist by some law enforcers, are ‘evidenced’ by rap music, often to build large ‘Joint Enterprise’ trials in which more than one person is prosecuted for a single crime.

Eithne Quinn, Erica Kane, and Will Pritchard say that their research has uncovered very concerning processes of ‘compounding injustice’ that risk innocent people being convicted of the most serious crimes.

“Our findings are deeply troubling, and support the view that the marshalling of rap evidence in criminal cases encourages police and prosecutors to further increase the number of people charged as secondaries under already-egregious secondary liability laws,” said Professor Eithne Quinn.